Celebrate food, life and diversity. Join me in the search for the right ingredients: Food without human antibiotics, growth hormones and other harmful additives that have become commonplace in animals raised on factory farms.

Attention food shoppers

We are legions -- legions who are sorely neglected by the media, which prefer glorifying chefs. I love restaurants as much as anyone else, but feel that most are unresponsive to customers who want to know how the food they are eating was grown or raised.I hope my blog will be a valuable resource for helping you find the healthiest food in supermarkets, specialty stores and restaurants in northern New Jersey. In the past five years, I stopped eating meat, poultry, bread and pizza, and now focus on a heart-healthy diet of seafood, vegetables, fruit, whole-wheat pasta and brown rice. I'm happiest when I am eating. -- VICTOR E. SASSON

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Roasted wild salmon with ripe mango and peaches

Fresh, wild-caught sockeye salmon from the Copper River in Alaska -- $14.99 a pound at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack -- roasted with ripe fruit and fresh garden herbs. An off note was a side dish of excessively oily Quinoa with Basil Pesto, left.

By VICTOR E. SASSONEDITORWhen I finally found fresh wild Alaskan sockeye salmon at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack this week, we had one ripe mango and several ripe peaches left.Roasting this wonderful salmon with ripe fruit, fresh herbs and lime juice is easy and yields a sweet-and-savory dinner.I started by slicing the fruit, placing it on parchment paper in a large roasting pan, adding fresh lime juice and dusting the mango and peach sections with Ground Saigon Cinnamon from Costco.The fruit roasted for about 10 minutes at 400 degrees while I prepared the 1.74-pound salmon fillet.I cut the deep red-orange fish into five pieces, seasoning them with salt, lime juice, Aleppo pepper and chopped fresh mint and oregano from my garden.I took the pan out of the oven, added the salmon and roasted the fish for 10 to 12 minutes.The Costco label recommends cooking wild salmon to an internal temperature of 145 degrees, and I may try that next time after pulling out one of the five pieces early and finding it too rare in the center.Unfortunately, I ruined my first wild sockeye salmon dinner of the season by eating several spoonfuls of Del Destino-brand Quinoa with Basil Pesto from Peru as a side dish.I liked the way the quinoa-pesto blend tasted, but was turned off by an excessive amount of oil.I continued to taste the quinoa and pesto long after I finished my meal.